Friday, April 9, 2010

Growing up in the mountains of Colorado, I always just assumed that all the drivers I saw from California were driving slow because they couldn’t handle the mountainous roads we have there. After driving on Highway 1 north of San Francisco I have found that, in fact, the exact opposite is true – their Department Of Transportation is just way better than ours.

In Colorado, when you see a sign that says to take the next turn at 25MPH, it can be assumed that the actual safe driving speed is closer to 45MPH. On Highway 1, we spent 6 straight hours of tight, hairpin turns, and I can now verify that every single one of those signs is perfectly accurate. Especially the ones that say 10MPH (!).

In addition, according to my new Fuzzbuster, there is an invisible cop once every 15 minutes or so, even in the most remote regions of this state. I’m sure these aren't actually cops, but rather small installations that just record the speeds of vehicles, and maybe take pictures of their license plate. Along some stretches, I was actually most likely getting pinged by an aircraft somewhere over head (here in CA, for whatever reason, they seem to be required to tell you by what method your speed is going to be determined on every single speed limit sign – we’ve travelled perhaps 100 or so miles of these special aircraft-speed-enforcement zones).